The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections, by Robbie Shilliam

Robbie Shilliam’s Black Pacific is an important book. Constructed in a concise 185 pages of text, this “comparative remix” of Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic retrieves the “manifest and spiritual” relationships between Māori anticolonial struggles in New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ) and the African Diaspora. Yet, unlike the Black Atlantic— which, Shilliam argues, “silenced Africa” in favor of an imperial “cartographic imagination”—the Black Pacific amplifies the anticolonial voices of indigenous Oceania (10). Based on archival materials scoured from the United Kingdom and Aotearoa NZ, newspapers, material culture, extensive personal interviews, and a wide range of secondary sources, the Black Pacific’s central argument holds that Māori and Africana peoples share a deep and “rich relationality,” despite a “poor material connectivity” (2). It unpacks these “deep relations” via a framework of “decolonial science,”which “repairs colonial wounds” and “binds back together people, lands, pasts, ancestors and spirits” (13). Readers familiar with Shilliam’s pioneering work on the Polynesian Panthers (2012) will perhaps anticipate a more extensive treatment of Black Power’s Pacific counterparts. However, the Black Pacific discusses how the worlds of Oceania and Africana are connected by political pathways as well as by “spiritual hinterlands” (147). It contextualizes Black Power in Aotearoa NZ within the historic traditions of Māori liberation theology, political activism, and physical encounters with the Black Diaspora. The Black Pacific posits that these deep relations of theology, culture, and nationalisms formed the bedrock of twentiethcentury anticolonial struggles. Its first chapter sails through African, Greek, and Maori cosmology. Citing Legba, Sankofa, Nyabinghi, Arcadian Hermes, and Māui Tāne, it argues that Africana and Oceania cosmologies have overlapping understandings. It demonstrates this by comparing the trickster deities of the Fon-Ewe’s Legba and Oceania’s Māui. This chapter sheds light on the rest of the text, which describes Africana peoples as the children of Legba and their Oceanic counterparts as the youth ofMāui Tāne. Legba’s cosmological role as the “keeper of the crossroads” is used to explain the book’s structure, which is non-chronologically organized via a zigzag of “relational crossroads.” The Black Pacific creatively connects the ideas of Black Power, liberation theology, Rastafari, Reggae, and South African antiapartheid with Māori anticolonialism. It brings together personalities and groups such as Bob Marley, Polynesian Panthers, Māori prophets, and Rastas of Aotearoa NZ. It links Ethiopia, Cape Town, London, and Kingston with Māori traditional meeting places (marae). Even still, it flirts with transnational moments such as Marcus Garvey’s incarceration in Atlanta, protests against

Robbie Shilliam's Black Pacific is an important book. Constructed in a concise 185 pages of text, this "comparative remix" of Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic retrieves the "manifest and spiritual" relationships between Maōri anticolonial struggles in New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ) and the African Diaspora. Yet, unlike the Black Atlanticwhich, Shilliam argues, "silenced Africa" in favor of an imperial "cartographic imagination"-the Black Pacific amplifies the anticolonial voices of indigenous Oceania (10).
Based on archival materials scoured from the United Kingdom and Aotearoa NZ, newspapers, material culture, extensive personal interviews, and a wide range of secondary sources, the Black Pacific's central argument holds that Maōri and Africana peoples share a deep and "rich relationality," despite a "poor material connectivity" (2). It unpacks these "deep relations" via a framework of "decolonial science," which "repairs colonial wounds" and "binds back together people, lands, pasts, ancestors and spirits" (13). Readers familiar with Shilliam's pioneering work on the Polynesian Panthers (2012) 1 will perhaps anticipate a more extensive treatment of Black Power's Pacific counterparts.
However, the Black Pacific discusses how the worlds of Oceania and Africana are connected by political pathways as well as by "spiritual hinterlands" (147). It contextualizes Black Power in Aotearoa NZ within the historic traditions of Maōri liberation theology, political activism, and physical encounters with the Black Diaspora.
The Black Pacific posits that these deep relations of theology, culture, and nationalisms formed the bedrock of twentiethcentury anticolonial struggles. Its first chapter sails through African, Greek, and Maori cosmology. Citing Legba, Sankofa, Nyabinghi, Arcadian Hermes, and Maūi Tane, it argues that Africana and Oceania cosmologies have overlapping understandings. It demonstrates this by comparing the trickster deities of the Fon-Ewe's Legba and Oceania's Maūi. This chapter sheds light on the rest of the text, which describes Africana peoples as the children of Legba and their Oceanic counterparts as the youth of Maūi Tane. Legba's cosmological role as the "keeper of the crossroads" is used to explain the book's structure, which is non-chronologically organized via a zigzag of "relational crossroads." The Black Pacific creatively connects the ideas of Black Power, liberation theology, Rastafari, Reggae, and South African antiapartheid with Maōri anticolonialism. It brings together personalities and groups such as Bob Marley, Polynesian Panthers, Maōri prophets, and Rastas of Aotearoa NZ. It links Ethiopia, Cape Town, London, and Kingston with Maōri traditional meeting places (marae). Even still, it flirts with transnational moments such as Marcus Garvey's incarceration in Atlanta, protests against South Africa's Springboks 1981 rugby trip, blackbirding, Ethiopia's 1896 Battle of Adwa, and nineteenth-century Maōri anticolonial wars. Some readers may find this to be too much. Others may ask for more.
Maōri Black Power presented a radical challenge to "New Zealand exceptionalism"-a master narrative that claimed that race relations in the country were harmonious in comparison to the wider Pacific (37). Marked by increased post-World War II migration of Maōri and other Pasifika peoples into majority White (Pakeha) populated urban areas, public comparisons were made about New Zealand's "Polynesian problem" and America's "Negro problem." As Black Power literature and Black Panther symbolism filtered into the country, these ideas were engaged by an emerging generation of Maōri activists, who formed new political organizations such as Nga Tamatoa.
Nga Tamatoa was led by western-educated urban Maōri who did not seek to become "brown skinned Pakehas" (43). It arose out of a critical 1970 youth conference held at Auckland University, which was also attended by politicized gang members. Nga Tamatoa asserted that Black Power in New Zealand was not simply a Pacific version of the Movement in "Africa-America," but an extension of Maōri movements for mana motuhake (self-determination). Still, it reflected a departure from the Te Aute tradition, an "Old Boy's" strategy favoring Maōri collaboration with Pakeha society.
In 1971 the Polynesian Panthers emerged as "the New Zealand response to the Black Revolution" (53). In contrast to Nga Tamatoa, the Panthers were primarily comprised of non-tertiary educated Pasifika migrants to Aotearoa NZ. They launched grassroots initiatives such as prison programs, police patrols, food banks, homework centers, non-interest loan schemes, and legal aid. Amidst political incarcerations and clashes with police, its Tongan Chairman Will 'Ilolahia argued that "blackness as a Polynesian identity was the solution to colonial divide and rule" (53). The Panthers visibly supported Pasifika political struggles, such as Aboriginal protest in Australia, Melanesian movements, and the Nuclear Free Movement.
The Black Pacific is as much Black politics as it is Black liberation theology. It also discusses Maōri anticolonial religious struggles in the nineteenth century, including the Kıngitanga (Maōri king) movement. In this era, religious leaders identified with a biblical Israel, spiritual redemption, and a return to ancestral lands. Maōri priest Te Ua Haumane's "decolonial gospel" envisioned the Maōri as God's chosen people, challenged racist Biblical depictions of Blacks, and "denied White avatars" (146). New Zealand's Government suppressed Maōri prophets like T.W. Ratana, who traveled the world seeking redress for colonial suppression. The oral tradition remembers him as having passed through South Africa (noting how Cape Town's blacks were mistreated), visiting Marcus Garvey during his incarceration in Atlanta, and witnessing UNIA parades.
These traditions of anticolonialism were "woven into the personal DNA" of some Polynesian Panthers (55), who read African-American political literature but also studied Maōri history. The Black Pacific asserts that Black Power temporally encouraged these activists to explore their indigenous heritage, as by 1981 this process required the "shedding of blackness as a political identification" in order to renew ancestral identifications (67). Indigenous liberation theology provided a spiritual shift from political connections with global Black Power to cultural linkages with "Soul Power" (87). This process involved the World Council of Churches and the exploits of African-American Minister Charles Spivey, who visited Aotearoa NZ in 1971.
For Shilliam, this partly explains the rise of Aotearoa NZ's Rastafari community, which was driven by former Polynesian Panthers and Black Power activists. His detailed discussion of Rasta is anchored by Bob Marley's 1978 tour of the country, and documented via an impressive cache of interviews with Panthers, Reggae musicians, and Maōri Rastas. Oral testimonies suggest that Reggae meshed well with Maōri spoken word practices. In 1979, a London based West Indian theatre group, Keskidee, toured New Zealand with Reggae band Ras Messengers. In collaboration with Maōri artists, they formed Keskidee Aroha, a collective transnational project of "decolonizing theatre." The themes of their plays included ideas of Garveyism, Rasta, and antiapartheid.
The personal experience of Miriama Rahihi-Ness reflected these transformations from "political to soul power." A former Panther, Rahihi-Ness hosted grounding sessions with Judy Mowatt of Marley's iconic back up group, the I-threes. Out of these sessions, she helped to form a Twelve Tribes community, which still exists. Rahihi-Ness was also instrumental in a late 1970s Black Women's Movement, an experience that showed how Maōri intergenerational tensions were perhaps manifested most acutely through gender dynamics.
The Black Pacific demonstrates how the Black Diaspora's engagements with the Pacific occurred via diverse culture and political streams across the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. It makes clear that it was an Oceanic experience that politicized Pasifika youth as engaged Black Power. It welcomingly contributes to an emerging body of studies on the Black Pacific, which tend to be focused on Asia. Furthermore, the Black Pacific offers a creative interdisciplinary methodology from which to explore cultural relations between "Africana" and Oceania. And its fascinating account of Black internationalism in the Pacific is uniquely told through the lens of liberation theology. That said, it is possible that the Black Pacific will raise more questions for its readers than answers. Centered on Maōri activism in Aotearoa NZ, it is not a comprehensive narrative of the "Black Pacific." Such a more ambitious undertaking would lend more attention to Melanesia, Australia, Polynesia outside of Aotearoa NZ (non-Maōri), and possibly Micronesia. In many ways, the study details Maōri connections with the wider Black world outside of the Pacific even more so than those within the Pacific. But it is precisely these Pacific dynamics that helped to define the "Black Pacific." And while the study highlights these "Pan-Pacific" connections, it is largely an excellent case study about the "Polynesian Maōri." This is not so much a critique of the work itself, but more so its title. Indeed, this speaks to the challenges that authors face when negotiating Book Reviews 67 the marketing priorities of publishers-how else can we introduce unexplored areas of the Diaspora without connecting readers to ideas of a familiar nature? For example, Shilliam preferred to have titled the study Black "Oceania" as opposed to "Pacific," given the latter term's connection to European imperialism. Still, the Black Pacific reveals that the narrative of blacks in the Pacific is overdue for more extensive research, and suggests that scholars working in this area develop a solid grasp of Pacific indigenous dynamics of race, culture, and ways of knowing. Highly recommended. Reviewed by Margo Natalie Crawford F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature dramatizes the role of "framing" in the ongoing production of African American literature. I was most drawn to Maxwell's focus on the Black Arts movement poems about FBI spies. Black Arts was the African American cultural movement that was most determined to "frame" a black aesthetic interior that could successfully dislodge the frames arising from external, oppressive, antiblack gazes. Maxwell's deep archival work in FBI files reminded me of the words from those files that so visually and powerfully punctuate Stanley Nelson's recent (2015) Black Panther Party documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. The FBI's violent surveillance was part of a clear white supremacist strategy to kill the radical, anticapitalist, and antiracist transnational work of the Black Panther Party.

Note
Reading F.B. Eyes renewed my interest in certain traditions of African American literature (like the Black Arts movement) that claim the right of blackened subjects to see ourselves through our own eyes. The radical Black Studies approach to African American literature is bored with the eternal spies (this radical Black Studies approach knows too well the antiblack violence of the spying and